user sorting of results

[Anon]

We've all seen it somewhere...now I want to learn how to do it.

I have a table, three columns wide with the first row being the types of field elements.

I want to allow a user to sort by any of the three categories.

I know this is probably labor intensive, but could someone steer me in the right direction to a tutorial or something?

[Anon]

$fields = array("field1","field2","field3");

(I will use [] for the < and > brackets from here on out so the code doesn't get eaten by phorum.)
Assuming you already have a form somewhere to work with, we'll add something like the following:

print "[select name=pickafield]";
$count = count($fields);
for ($i=0;$i < $count;$i++){
&nbsp;&nbsp;print "[option value=$i";
&nbsp;&nbsp;if ($i==$pickafield) print " SELECTED";
&nbsp;&nbsp;print "]".$fields[$i]."[/option]";
}
print "[/select]";

then you just build your query like so:

$query = "select * from table order by ".$field[$pickafield];

[Anon]

Thanks! I'll give that a shot and see what I can come up with.

[Anon]

I'm working on a function for project now to sort records like that with a sort, subsort, and even a sub-sub sort.

http://samuelfullman.com/team/php/atomic_functions/function_sort_order_i2_v100.php

go here and try this out and see if this is what you had in mind. My email is [e-mail]. I'll be in Boston for the next week but remind me later if you'd like to use this code. Basically it's a function that is called on the query string of each of the column headings. Click once, you get ASC, click twice you get DESC, click something else and the index gets "scooted over" to second place.

Sam Fullman

[Anon]

continued from this thread:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=2&id=205810&thread=205720

ok...this method seems easy enough...but I have a problem now.

First off, I am allowing users to select an option from a drop down, which gets passed to the display page using the variable $sel_record. When sorting, this variable gets flushed. How to do keep it active?

Here's the code I'm using:

if ($sortby == 1)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by user ASC";

elseif ($sortby == 2)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by added ASC";

elseif ($sortby == 3)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by quote ASC";

else
$sql = "select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by added ASC";
$connection = mysql_connect($default->db_host, $default->db_user, $default->db_pass)
or die ("Couldn't connect to server.");
$db = mysql_select_db($default->db, $connection)
or die ("Couldn't select database.");
$sql_result = mysql_query($sql);
if (!$sql_result) {
echo "<table width=$default->table_width border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"2\" align=\"center\">
<tr>
<td align=\"center\">$lang_err_lambs</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>";
} else {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result);
$added = $row["added"];
$timestmp = strtotime("$added");
$datestr = date("F - Y", $timestmp);
mysql_close($connection);
echo "
<br>
$lang_display_url || $lang_view_url
<p>
<div align=\"center\">Quotes for: $datestr</div>
<br>
<table width=\"90%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\">
<tr>
<td valign=\"top\">
<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"1\" cellpadding=\"3\" width=\"100%\" NAME=\"A\" ID=\"A\">
<tr>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"5%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\">Rank</td>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"10%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sortby=1\">User</a></td>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sortby=2\">Added</a></td>
<td width=\"70%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sort=3\">Quote</a></td>
</tr>
";